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When we have taken over PAYE schemes from another payroll agency we have updated addresses with the Employers office.

This seems to feed through to the Accounts office in Bradford and payment booklets get sent to us as new agent. Then 2 years down the line a critical piece of communication (in this case a refund cheque) gets sent by the Accounts office to the old payroll agency.

I spoke to the Employers helpline who confirmed that all addresses on the PAYE scheme were correctly updated 2 years ago, and then she said "I don't know if the accounts office use a different system, if they do, I don't have access to it"

So I finally managed to get through to the accounts office who said yes we updated the agency address 2 years ago, but clearly no-one told us to update the communiaction address "it's not our fault" - they hold 3 address fields, employer, agent and communication.

What process should I use to update addresses on PAYE schemes? I asked the employer helpline and they said write to the Employers office or fill in the online form (well that's what I did and that clearly doesn't work)... I asked the accounts office and he said "well I can change this for you now over the phone, but it only updates our records not the employers office records"

Why do I feel that I am constantly banging my head against a blooming brick wall with HMRC...

One of our clients grew and decided to do their payroll in house. We wrote to the accounts office and district address to tell them that the client was doing their own and gave them the client's address.

Needless to say, neither updated it. We still received coding notices and the end of year underpayment notice. So we wrote to both again. Still not changed, so wrote a third time.

After 6 months of this, we sent in a formal complaint, relatively quickly answered (8 weeks) saying how sorry they were and that the records had now been corrected.

No they hadn't, we still got coding notices. So, another formal complaint. Again, apologetic reply saying that they had corrected it but the system had reinstated our address, but they'd corrected it again.

All was well for a few months, then we got student loan start notices coming through. So, another complaint, followed by another apology saying that whilst they'd changed the collector and district systems, they hadn't realised that they had to change the student loan system as well, but they'd changed that also now, so we shouldn't receive anything else.

Then in Feb/Mar this year, we got a load of coding notices and student loan notices. Another formal complaint, to which they replied that they hadn't a clue what was happening but had passed it up to the experts - needless to say, 2 months later and no reply!

Considering that we had told them we were no longer acting, and had removed the client from HMRC online system, it's crazy that they keep automatically changing the address back to us soon after it's been manually over-ridden following our complaints.

I used to work from home, and even now, 10 years later, still get random PAYE documentation at home for clients who've long moved to other accountants or ceased trading, where I've told HMRC accordingly at the time, and where correspondence rightly stopped being sent to me at the time.

This year, for example, I got one of those P35 reminder letters dated end of April, for a client company that was struck off in 2001. Never had anything from HMRC about them in the past decade, but suddenly, out of the blue, the P35 reminder!